The study aims to investigate junior high school students’ language proficiency, use, attitude, and viewpoints of an indigenous language teaching program in Taiwan. In the study, both surveys of the junior high students and interviews with the parents were used for quantitative and qualitative analysis of the language situation of the students and the situation of language inheritance and language use at home. A total of 63,812 valid questionnaires were collected and 56 Taiwanese parents and 8 new immigrant parents were interviewed.
The results reveal that 85.9% of the students have the chance to acquire Mandarin as the first language but only 42.4% has the opportunity to acquire the indigenous languages. Generally female students’ ability in ethnic languages and English is better than male students and students’ ethnic language proficiency is higher than English. Overall, Southern Min students’ ethnic language proficiency was the highest, followed by Hakka students and aboriginal students the last. Those living in northern Taiwan have the best English ability but the worst ability in the ethnic language. Eastern students’ proficiency in both indigenous languages and English is the lowest. However, Southern students have the best ability in the indigenous language, and they also maintain good proficiency in English generally.
The result of the ethnic language use shows that there is a very dangerous situation on the use of Hakka. Hakka students use the least ethnic language in every domain, which is even less than the aboriginal students. However, Southern Min use the ethnic language the most. Overall, the use of the indigenous languages is still much lower than the use of Mandarin. In general, Mandarin has the highest evaluation among all languages. However, students hold positive attitudes toward preserving and learning ethnic languages. Especially for aboriginal students, they have a very strong language awareness and identity toward their own languages. Besides, students also feel that they have made progress from the indigenous language teaching program. Lastly, to some extent, the first language, grade, gender, residential area, the sub-area (Hakka area and aboriginal area), the ethnic group are found to be related to language proficiency and language attitude of the junior high students.
Children of the new immigrants, on the whole, do not speak fluent Southeast Asian languages. They seldom use the new immigrant languages at home with their new immigrant mother. The indigenous languages are used less too. Mandarin is the only dominant language at the family domain. However, many new immigrant children are willing to learn and maintain their Southeast Asian languages. Finally, both Taiwanese parents and parents from Southeast Asia agree with the indigenous language teaching program. However, Taiwanese parents in the northern or north-central areas seldom speak the ethnic language. Those who live in the central, southern, and eastern Taiwan use half Mandarin and half Southern Min with children at home. New immigrant parents use Mandarin as the dominant language at home; however, indigenous languages and Southeast Asian languages are seldom used at home. The intergenerational transmission of the Southeast Asian languages rarely happens among new immigrant families.